


Save Me From This Darkness

by Zagzagael



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Me From This Darkness

_'My best unbeaten brother  
This isn't all I see  
Oh no I see a darkness  
And did you know how much I love you  
Is a hope that somehow you you  
Can save me from this darkness' ~ Bonnie Prince Billy_

Sam was miserable and it was infecting him like a disease; his head aching, his lungs constricted, his guts cramping. Even his teeth hurt. His throat was burning with accusations and recrimations trapped inside, held inside. Misery and mourning. Regret. And longing. Huge gouts of longing bleeding out of him and no one applying a tourniquet. Or even attempting to move towards him with a ligature. He sighed. And that felt self-indulgent and whiny. He didn't want to be the whinge anymore, had snapped at Dean about letting him grow up, why then couldn't he act the grown up? He moved uncomfortably on the seat, cranked down the window and leaned his head out, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of wet highway drying in the morning sun.

"Gotta see a man about a horse?" Dean asked, glancing quickly away from the road and back.

"Nah. I'm good." He couldn't hold himself still, felt how he was being wound tighter and tighter, lashed to a wheel spinning between them. Set in unstoppable motion by all the events of the last year, and even more, by the mere fact of being born into the world. Existing. And there was that whining again. He squirmed, he actually squirmed.

"You sure? You seem, I dunno, squirrely."

"Do I? I feel like I swallowed a handful of fire ants, if that's what you mean."

A one-shoulder shrug. "Not exactly. Why would you feel like that?"

"Nerves? Tension?" Silently, "Unparalleled desire". He rolled the window back up and turned towards Dean. "None of this is really going away, is it?"

"Dammit, Sam. Can we just not?"

"I'm pretty sure that's what we're doing, isn't it? Just _not_-ing?" He smiled at the grammar of it, looking down at his hands in his lap, wiping sweat down the length of his thighs. "It doesn't feel like it's working, Dean. Doesn't feel like things are getting better, doing it like that."

"How about we try? For me? Can we try to not talk the shit out of something for once?"

Sam nodded, misery like bone marrow. "Yeah."

***

Dean castaneted his phone and dropped it into the pocket of his leather. "That was Bobby. New job." He shook his head. "A corpse eater. In Helmsplace. 'Bout a hundred and forty miles from here."

Sam raised a lazy eyebrow and leaned in the window of the Impala, dumping the plastic bag of snacks and drinks on the seat, turning to lean against the door, watching Dean watch the pump.

"I swear to god, demons must be in charge of oil prices," his brother groused.

"That seems pretty obvious, Dean." Sam laughed. "Maybe after the Apocalypse we can all drive muscle cars and land yachts on pennies a gallon."

Dean glanced up, looked through him, suddenly remembering the Impala up on blocks, field stripped, rats nested into her upholstery, and he shook his head once, twice, to clear it. "Yeah, that'd be nice." He reached out and caressed the deck lid.

Sam gave him a long look and wondered, for the hundredth time why Dean had called him back at four in the morning. He bit down on it and folded himself in shotgun.

***

Sam lay back on the hotel bed, feet on the floor, forearms crossed over his eyes. Exhaustion was pressing down on him, a slow execution by the piling of lethargic stones. Dean was in the bathroom, showering, scrubbing away at his own fatigue.

Bone-weary and yet still on a mental edge, some kind of brotherly Damoclean sword suspended above his head, keeping him brain-alert. He let his mind cast back to simpler sibling times and found that there really weren't any, excepting when he was truly small and Dean was everything, surrogate mother, substitute father, best friend, everything. But he didn't want to think about such intense dependency right now. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, pushing away at the images of the small boys they had once been, and wasn't at all surprised when the crazy year before he left for Stanford spread itself out in his mind, a tableau of intense love and longing. He had known that entire year he would leave, knew he was going, abandoning Dean. He kept his secrets and hid himself away inside the person Dean was most comfortable having around. But there were....those other things, shared times....that were not hidden, not a secret, laid out silently between them, treasured. And during that time he needed Dean in the same way he needed to eat and breathe and sleep. For months after he left, he couldn't breathe, couldn't sleep and could not slake his hunger and his thirst.

His eyelids relaxed, his face fell lax, his rolled his shoulders into the cheap mattress, releasing the tension as he played the precious memories out. Wondering now, nearly a decade later, how he could have ever left it behind. What a selfish creature he had been. He dug the edges of his hands against his closed eyes, breathing deeply.

He remembered when Dean had solidified out of the shadows that night in Stanford, inside the apartment he shared with Jess, how he seemed to be formed wholly out of Sam's years of unspoken longing, how his actual physical presence inside that room negated every single thing Sam had convinced himself he wanted, needed. In that moment, he knew.

He heard the shower dial off and he dried his eyes and laid his wrist across his brow bone. The door opened after a long moment. Sam listened as Dean traversed the room, he shifted his hand to watch his brother, clad only in sweatpants, wet hair still spiky from being towelled.

"What? No tv? No porn?"

Sam shook his head. "Too tired to get it up. And what else is the point?"

Dean nodded, a small smile. "If I didn't think it would make me a menopausal bitty, like you apparently are, I'd agree. This job has worn me the hell out."

"It's over now."

"Yep." Dean was rustling through the plastic convenience store bag, pulling out two long-necks. "Here, this will take the edge off and then you can sleep like a baby, baby."

Sam sat up and took the beer. "Thanks."

Dean fell onto his own bed, leaning back against the headboard, tipping the mouth of the bottle to his lips. Sam watched the taut length of his throat as he swallowed and he had to look away.

"Dean?" he asked and it sounded a bit like throat clearing.

"Mmmmm."

"Do you ever think about that year before I left for Stanford?"

"I don't know. What do you mean? What about it?"

Sam smiled, keeping his lips from breaking into a splitting grin; Dean knew exactly what he was referencing. He swung around so he was sitting on the bed facing his brother and slowly he began undressing. Sipping at the beer between discarded shirts. Long fingers tugging at the hoodie zip pull, and then feeding the bottom few buttons through the placket on his flannel, tossing the clothes to the end of the bed. He reached up, over his head, and pulled the t-shirt off and ran one hand over his chest, smoothing at the curling hair there, lightly tapping at the tattoo, paying homage of sorts. He reached for the beer and glanced under his lowered lids at Dean, he was being watched carefully but cautiously. He drank and set the bottle on the floor, bending over, and began untying the practical five-hole Docs he'd scored at a thrift store the week before.

"You gonna tell me why or is that it - do I ever think about that year?"

Sam grabbed the sloppy ends of both socks and tugged them off his feet, wriggling his toes, pulling one foot up onto his knee and massaging each digit slowly, see-sawing his fingers deep into the webs, gently pulling each knuckle until it popped with a satisfying release. Listening to Dean exhale. "What's to tell? Just wondering if you remember it," he paused, sucking his lower lip in under his top teeth, "and you do."

"Maybe we're remembering different things, Sammy."

Sam grinned over at him, nodding, reaching for the almost empty beer now and sucking down the last of it, foamy backwash and all. Then he shook his head. "I don't think so, Dean."

Dean got up and fished two more beers out of the bag, then reached for a third and returned to the bed, handing one to Sam.

"How come, tell me this, Sammy, how come in all these years, all we've been through, you're bringing that up now?"

"I've just been thinking about it, that's all."

"That's all? Huh." Dean swallowed half a bottle of beer with one pull. He let out a shaky breath. "Like, just _now_ you've been thinking about it?"

"No. Not just now," Sam said softly. He unbuckled his belt, then let himself fall backward, kicking both feet up onto the bed, crossing his ankles. "Sometimes," liar, he thought, always always always, "I miss that closeness. We felt inseparable then. Unstoppable."

"Yeah. So inseparable you split." Dean snapped his fingers, "Just like that," and finished the second bottle. "I didn't even know you'd applied. I had no idea you were going. Anywhere. Guess you don't remember that part of how inseparable we were. You left and..."

Sam had both hands up over his eyes again, pressing until he was seeing blue and white explosions. "And what? And what, Dean?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Of course not." Sam turned on his side, away from Dean, curled his knees up towards his chest, rolled his fists below his chin and began solving equations with two variables until he fell into tormented sleep.

***

Poor Boy sandwiches, bags of chips and two drinks; the Impala hood a makeshift picnic spread. The glorious autumn afternoon still damp from the early morning rain. They were parked on the edge of a field that Sam's iPhone identified as a Civil War historical site. A rather intimidating, large flock of blackbirds had gone to ground in the centre of the yellowed long grass, a shallow lake of feathers rustling in the small breeze. In a poetic fit, Sam imagined them all as the souls of the long-dead soldiers who had given up their lives in that meadow. He smiled ruefully at himself, "given up, lost", musing silently at the language of sacrifice.

Dean was eating noisily and with a relish that made Sam ache. Everything was so wrong, so broken between them now. They were occupying separate shores that could not be breached. Sam swallowed hard at his food and it stuck painfully in his throat, he washed it down with a gulp of soda and that hurt, too.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he said softly, looking down at the sandwich in his hands.

With a quick and furious movement, Dean put his sandwich down. "You're like a dog with a goddamned bone." He swiped at his mouth with a napkin and threw that onto the hood as well, turning to Sam. "Let's do this, then, okay? Because I can't keep having you poke at me. It doesn't feel good."

Sam looked at him, his eyes narrowed, his mouth grim, a worry line that seemed permanently etched into his forehead stood out as stark as a scar.

Dean looked at him, eyes flinty. "Talk! That's what you want then fine, talk it out, lay it on me, tell me whatever it is you need to tell me. The fact that I don't want to hear it, can't hear it, doesn't really seem to matter to you. So, c'mon, Sammy, bring it on."

Sam carefully wrapped his sandwich back into its waxed paper, snapped open the crumpled paper bag and placed it inside.

"I get it. Now you don't wanta fucking talk." Dean held up both hands. "I give up."

"Don't give up. Don't give up on me, Dean. Don't say that. I think....I need you to be my big brother again."

"I thought you needed me to let you grow up? Treat you like a grown up. I thought," and here he paused and Sam trembled, "you needed to get away from me."

Sam dropped his hands to his side, turned towards Dean, leaving all the vulnerable parts of his body open. "I can't believe that you think about that year as though it were some sort of adolescent circle jerk. I can't believe that."

"Okay, whoa. I know I'm not the college-educated conversationalist, but that seems like a strange leap. What's really going on here, Sammy?

"I want," he clasped his hands in front of him, an unconscious gesture, "I want...damn, damn, damn. Dean, I need..."

"Oh, Sam." Dean's voice was choked.

"I need you to save me." He hung his head, his shoulders falling forward away from his strong back, folding in, still holding his own hands, one inside the other, two dead birds cradled pitifully. He closed his eyes, holding back tears that he refused to cry. Held the air inside his lungs. Listening to the slow time bomb ticking of his heart, his pulse counting down inside his ears, in the long length of his jugular. "Dean," he whispered.

And Dean moved towards him.

He wrapped him in his arms, pulled him in as tightly as he could and Sam's knees buckled beneath the weight of two entangled lifetimes. Dean let himself be pulled to the ground, still holding on for life, falling through.

The two men went to their knees and Dean leaned back on his heels, pulling his brother with him, cradling him against his chest, one hand coming up to hold Sam's head tight against him, pressing his ear right over his heart, rocking him down onto his haunches, a fistful of the back of Sam's hoodie in his grip. "I know you do, Sam, I know you do." He moved his mouth down into Sam's crazy long hair, mouthing the words around the brown locks.

Sam's arms so tight around his waist they would be pulled to drowning depths beneath dark waters.

Then Dean tipped Sam's face up, forehead to forehead. "Open your eyes. Yeah, shhhhhhhh, now, shhhhhh. We're going to save each other." And then he was kissing Sam's face, kissing away the unshed tears, crooning through his lips, trembling against Sam's temple, kissing into his eyelids, licking up under his brow bone, kissing down the side of his nose and finally finally finding his mouth and slanting his own just there. His hand at the back of Sam's neck, the other pulling at the rounded ball of his shoulder, moving himself deeply into this other man's body.

Then both of Sam's hands went to his face and held him and he answered the searching kiss with a searing need of his own, drawing him down to him.

Dean broke the kiss, whispering into his brother's mouth, "I don't know how just yet, but we're going to save each other together. Together."


End file.
